Broken Pieces
by Beckon
Summary: The consequences were a given and yet, he seemed willing to make up for them.


She was never built to last.

Every passing day only ticked off twenty-four more hours she no longer had.

She supposed this false sense of mortality finally caught up to her in the midst of an ongoing battle. She took one hit too many and felt these forged bones of her give in; she felt the counterfeit organs that were stuffed inside of her shut down; she felt the once strong beat of her heart simmered down to a soft tremble, too soft to be picked up by a machine. The enemy wasn't dead yet, but she felt herself collapse into a crumbled heap of disappointment and failure that was far too weak to get back up.

The only thing her skin could register was the coldness of the ground underneath her; sometimes, she could feel the warm contact of her blood as it trickled its way out of her wounds.

Her Captain handled the enemy unit after her fall, depleting it of life in a single sword swing. But just like him… he walked away without so much as a glance in her direction. She didn't matter to him, he had twelve more units like her lined up and ready to go; ready to replace her as soon as he returned to the labs. It wasn't something new. He had threatened her with it multiple times and shown her the carbon copies of herself that remained suspended in preserving fluids. While she would never to think to betray him or go against his word, she respected him as her creator and Captain, he was never happy with that; he always wanted more, he wanted to teach her fear and make this emotionless, animated mannequin learn something.

The lab grown heart that thumped in her chest meant nothing to him.

The fresh blood that spilled out of her wounds and broken skin did little to change his mind.

She had everything biologically needed to be classified as human, or at least as some kind of living object. It didn't matter though, it never did; it just meant more organs to replace when his experiments went wrong and sheered the ones inside of her; more treatments to perform when his thesis failed and his prototype chemicals couldn't heal the severe wounds he gave her.

She was a 'thing' and nothing could change that.

She predicted it would only be a few hours at most before her organs finished shutting down, maybe less if the bleeding continued on at this consistent rate. In a few hours, she will cease to exist… it would be like she never lived at all. With the replacement body ready to go once her Captain returned, no one would even notice her absence. At least there would be no worry. She did not want to inconvenience the others with such news.

Fingertips dipped into the hollowed out wound that shredded across her midsection; the flesh, muscle and tissue had been completely ripped from their anatomical organization and laid out around her in chaotic, pulled strands. The first of her senses to go was pain… perhaps she should be glad of that now.

Green eyes gently closed for the last time as she let this unnamed, non-existing fate find her.

...

...

And yet, they opened once more…

"Do try to be careful…"

The voice sounded strange and she couldn't pinpoint it… she was almost certain she had never heard it before at all. Did it belong to the person who revived her? Hands moved to push aside the white sheets that had been laid to rest over her wounded body, revealing the tight bandages that covered the previous injury. She could tell with faint movement and from her overall senses that it had been healed and pulled back closed… something that had previously been impossible to do when she was out dying on the battlefield.

But who would waste their time with reviving a useless unit?

"You weren't exactly easy to heal… in fact, I had a difficult time trying to figure out what you were."

Finally, she moved to identify the voice, or at least put a face to it. Eyes settled on the seated man just across the room from where she was resting. She noticed the way he bit down on his lower lip for a moment as he seemed to be examining her in the same way she was. Light-pink strands were pushed aside to one side of his face as white-framed glasses remained perched on the bridge of his nose. His eyes were a light color but she couldn't depict what shade they were from this distance. It was his white and black mixed uniform that drew her interest in… that finally gave her a way of identifying him.

But what would an Espada want with her?

"An artificial being… you don't run into those all too often."

"Why?"

For a moment, he seemed almost put off by the sudden question, as though he never thought past this one event. He cleared his throat lightly and moved to push himself into a straighter sitting position. "Because I was intrigued. You know, it's not all too often when you walk out across the battlefield to collect the dead bodies of those who failed… and you find an abandoned member of your enemy. You see, in your society, those who fail are granted the ability to return for medical attention, usual on the shoulders of the strong; in our society, those who fail are granted a quick death- not always painless, but quick."

"My body was shutting down… I had failed." She started.

"That's true. When I stumbled across you, you were well on your way to dying… but you weren't nearly as close as you probably felt. You see, I monitored that battle; I watched the group of people you came in with leave you as soon as those heartless jockeys had been killed. I suppose one would think that being without a heart would make me equally heartless to a scene like that but… my curiosity got the best of me. I watched you easily take on two of those mongrels without so much as a hand of assistance from the others and you handled the combat well, annihilating those two before the third one gave you that killing blow. I figured, at best, the least I could do was get some combat data off of you." He spoke, fingers pushing up on his glasses for a moment. "However, further study showed that you were still salvageable and I couldn't pass up the opportunity…"

Opportunity?

What opportunity?

What exactly was she to do with this man? He didn't even know who she was or what she was more importantly and yet… he showed more genuine interest and maintenance than her Captain ever had. Then again, she supposed he didn't have multiple clones of her hidden somewhere either…

Fingers dropped to touch at her previous wound before they slowly moved up along her body, feeling the soft, heavy folds of her loose kimono as they fell open against her chest; shielding just enough to keep her modest, but showing adequate skin to realize just how badly her body had been damaged. There were easy patches of where her flesh had to be replaced, their different colorization would ease away in the passing days; there were a few stitches that had been left behind to ensure the grafts stayed in their places. Bruises were just now recovering and fading away to faint shades of purple and yellow… It made her wonder just how long she had been unconscious.

No doubt, to anyone outside of this room, she was dead.

So what did that make her?

Where was she to go from here?

Her fingers eventually moved up to feel where her red choker had once been tied around her neck, unsure how to feel about the sudden absence of the soft fabric. A soft, lingering touch found that it wasn't the only thing absent at the moment...

When he spoke next, his eyes didn't entirely meet her own.

"The realization of this situation has already come to your attention, I can see it your eyes. Of course, detailing how difficult and unique your artificial body is, your recovery did not come without certain… consequences and for that, I will offer you something in return. A recent 'accident' has left my lab a little empty of working hands, how would you like to join me instead?"

The answer seemed obvious enough.

And yet, even then, she felt herself tremble at the thought of it…

But this man had showed her something she had never before encountered. Where her Captain had abandoned her… he picked her up, stitched her back together, changed her into something more indestructible. The consequences were a given and yet, he seemed willing to make up for them, to make up for the nonconsensual surgery.

What other choice did she have?


End file.
